Above the gate was a sign: "Fürstengrube." Below it was a
German miner's salute, "Glückauf." Fürstengrube was a subcamp of
Buna, Auschwitz III. On one side the land was dotted with gnarled
trees, brush, and partially dried weeds. The camp was rectangular
with single-story barracks, which, unlike those in the main camp
in Auschwitz, were newly constructed. The windows and doors faced
the yard. In the farthest corner, squeezed between two barracks,
stood two cement-slab buildings. The entire camp was surrounded
by a brick wall and a mesh fence with barbed wire on top. Brick
towers stood at the corners of the yard. Our entrance into
Fürstengrube was not as tumultuous as our arrivals had been at
the three prior camps.

Inside, the yard was still full of construction debris. We
were marched to the center of the yard, arranged in a square, and
made to face the Hauptscharführer and his entourage in the
middle. The guards had already taken up their positions in the
towers and at the gate. A roll call count confirmed that the same
number had arrived that had left the main camp. Grimm ordered us
to follow the Blockführers to the barracks. Before we left, Grimm
reminded us to come back as soon as we were assigned to blocks
and bunks.

Each barracks consisted of one room. Inside, there were five
rows of three-level bunks with narrow passages between. On the
bunks lay straw-filled pallets, pillows, and burlap blankets.
This was home for about 140 of us. As we returned to the yard,
the sun was setting. Once we were in place, Moll instructed us.
"I am your Lagerführer here. Those who are willing to work hard
will be safe." Then he pointed at the SS men behind him.
"Raportführer Anton Lukoschek," he said, "is my assistant." Under
him, he explained, were Arbeitsdienstführer Schwientny and
Blockführer Pfeiffer. Then came SS-Rottenführer Adolph Voigt,
who, he said, would be in charge of the KB. Lastly, he pointed at
Klaus Koch, who was to be in charge of the kitchen.

Although Moll was about forty-five, weighed about 120 kilos,
and was of only average height, which was odd for an SS man, he
carried himself well. With his broad shoulders and muscular body,
he looked youthful. His straight blond hair was cut short. In his
chiseled face were set a pair of cold blue eyes. Only one of them
was real, for he had lost the other fighting in France. When he
spoke, only the live eye shifted. There seemed to be no real
feeling in the heart beating beneath his bulging chest. All in
all, in his tight uniform and knee-high boots, he looked like a
Prussian warrior or the perfect Nazi poster boy. Moll announced
that Richard Grimm would again be our Lagerältester and then
left.

The Kapos were usually one ruling clique, but that by no
means ensured a safety net for them. Even a Lagerältester might
find himself out of power, as Kurt Goldberg did in Gutenbrunn.
There were Kapo Michael, Kapo August, Kapo Karl, Kapo Hermann,
Kapo Wilhelm, Kapo Olschewski, Kapo Jurkowicz, and others.
Although they didn't like to see Grimm, a newcomer, take charge
of them, they kept quiet at first. Grimm had a quiet discussion
with them, and then he turned to us.

"Here we will be working in a coal mine called
Fürstengrube," he said. Then he pointed at the Kapos standing
behind him. "They will be taking you to and from the mine. Each
block will also have a Blockkapo." Grimm then appointed
Goldstein, the former first aid attendant at Steineck, to be our
barber. Two more inmates were to repair shoes, two more would
work as tailors, and six others would be carpenters in camp. They
were to help with the remaining construction of the camp, under
Kapo Josef Hermann. Though there were many medical doctors in our
ranks, including Seidel from Gutenbrunn, a new doctor named
Lubicz, who came with the Kapos, was assigned to the KB. The rest
of us were divided into three groups, each of which would work
eight-hour shifts in the mine. One shift lasted from 6:00
A.M. until 2:00 P.M., and the third began at 10:00 P.M. and ended
at 6:00 A.M. Our only chance for survival seemed to lie in
our being valuable to the Third Reich's war machine.

Kapo Hermann wore a red triangle without yellow corners,
which marked him as a political non-Jewish prisoner. Nathan Green
became the Blockkapo in Block 4, to which Papa, Josek, and I were
assigned. He was the only Jewish criminal I had seen in Auschwitz
and came from nearby Katowice. What crimes he had been convicted
of I never learned. Green was tall, trim, and handsome. Like
other Kapos, he wore better prison clothes, which distinguished
him from common inmates. In this topsy-turvy world, being a
criminal was not a stigma. In fact, criminals thrived in
Auschwitz, because they did whatever the Nazis ordered them to
do. Green's prison number was around 70000, which meant that he
had been in Auschwitz for at least a year and a half. It was
demeaning, being ruled by the lowest element of society.

Nothing ever escaped Green's shifty gray eyes. He
systematically skimmed rations from us, not only for himself but
also for his friends. Papa, Josek, and I worked the early shift,
leaving camp at five in the morning. That was the most preferred
shift, but unfortunately we were rotated weekly. The night shift
allowed us little time to rest, because of the day's barracks
activities.

On the first morning of work, Richard Grimm and Kommandant
Moll arrived when it was still dark. "Raus, raus, alle raus,
eintreten, schnell!" Grimm bellowed. Nathan Green yelled, "Alle
aufstehen!" We were given normal rations again and miners'
overalls and lamps. At five thirty Scharführer Pfeiffer, assisted
by Kapo Michael Puka, marched us out of the camp. Kapo Puka, a
German criminal, turned out to be cold-blooded and sadistic. As a
long-time inmate, one of the first fifteen thousand, Puka enjoyed
a certain status in the camp. Though only 1.7 meters tall, he
nevertheless was the most fearsome of all Kapos. He spoke to us
only to curse us. His insults he accompanied with grinding teeth.
"Scheiss Juden" was his mildest abuse of a Jewish inmate. He was
cynical and quick to ridicule.

About two hundred of us were under Puka's command. After
leaving the camp, we passed a cemetery. The gravestones inside
were surrounded by withering weeds. Some stones were toppled and
sunken. Two and a half kilometers further on, we came to a hut
with a slanted roof. At first it did not look like a mine, but
when several men in overalls with lights and lunch boxes in hand
came out, we knew we were there.

In prewar Poland, this was known as the Harceska Mine, and
it had been inoperative for over twenty years. Rubber was crucial
to the German I.G. Farben Company. In order to manufacture
synthetic rubber, coal was needed. When the Germans occupied this
area in 1939, they reopened the mine and renamed it Fürstengrube.
Günthergrube, not far away, had a similar history. It had been
renamed in honor of Günther Falkenhahn, the I.G. Farben director
there.

The first thirty men, including Josek, Papa, and me,
descended into the mine on a hand-operated elevator. We could
smell the odor of coal. I knew that miners worked hard and always
faced danger. I respected the danger and did not know what to
expect. None of us had ever seen or ever been inside a mine. When
the elevator stopped and the doors opened, a thick coal fume
greeted us. The air lacked oxygen and was full of coal dust. We
could hardly see ahead of us. Before long our eyes adjusted, and
we saw a long tunnel with a rail track and carts in the middle.
One foreman took my father and me, and another led the rest of
the group down the track. We followed our foreman into a cave.
There lay coal lumps weighing from a few grams to fourteen kilos.
Some were still lodged in the cave walls. "This cave was just
blasted yesterday," said the foreman, as he handed us shovels and
buckets. Our job was to fill the buckets and load the coal onto
the carts.

The cave was barely big enough for both of us to fit into.
The only light we had came from our lamps. We began working, on
our knees with our heads bent. The smell of coal caused us to get
dizzy. At midday a couple of inmates brought down buckets of
soup--the usual turnip and water and, if we were lucky, a potato.
Then we saw Josek again. He told us that he and two others moved
the filled carts to the end of the mine, where a locomotive
pulled them further. By then we were all weary and tired, and as
black as chimney sweeps. Coal dust had settled in our mouths and
noses and had covered our skin. Kapos Puka and Pfeiffer were
waiting as we came up at two o'clock. "One, two, three," Puka
yelled, demanding that we march back to camp. When we neared the
camp, he created a real charade: "Mützen ab! Mützen auf!" (Caps
on! Caps off!), he shouted. That day, in order to ingratiate
himself with Pfeiffer, he beat up an inmate without reason or
provocation.

Soup once a day, a little bread, and coffee twice a day was
not enough nourishment to prevent the further deterioration of
our health. Zosia, Stasia, and all those kind souls who had
helped us in the past were far away, so hard times continued.
After a week or two our arms hurt from lifting the heavy shovels.
Lugging the coal lumps by hand to the carts was even more
difficult, and our hands were now calloused and cracked. The coal
dust gradually baked into our skins, and the fat-free soap we
used could not wash it off. My eyelids looked as if they were
coated with mascara. Papa and Josek didn't look any better. It
won't be long before all of us are black Mussulmen, I thought.

Most Schachtmeisters (foremen) here were Poles. But there
were also some Germans and Volksdeutsche. Most started out as
reasonable and decent people, but in time they adopted the Kapo
tactics and resorted to abuse and beating. We soon discovered
that Hauptscharführer Moll regarded the physical punishment of
inmates as his privilege. He disliked being upstaged by others.
One day when Moll learned that an inmate had been beaten and
disabled from work by a foreman, he ordered the foremen to stop
punishing inmates and instead to report inmates' offenses to the
camp. One day an inmate gave his foreman a letter to mail, as he
had done many times before. This time, however, the foreman
reported it to Kapo Puka. Puka in turn told Pfeiffer about it,
and Pfeiffer then ordered the prisoner punished upon his return
to the camp. From then on, no one dared to send out a letter.

At the beginning of December 1943 the first snow fell.
Winter was coming. Our difficulties increased as the cold took
its toll. At least one inmate per day was unable to make it back
from work on his own. One day Papa was fortunate to be given an
extra portion of bread. He kept it all day long to share with his
sons in the evening. That was a day of reprieve for us: we got
our first extra food since leaving Gutenbrunn.

At the end of a day's work I could hardly straighten my
hands. My knuckles were bruised and oozed blood. In the meantime,
our camp kept growing. Two more medical doctors were added to the
KB, and Dr. Seidel finally got his old job back.

Josef Hermann's Sonderkommandos built two more barracks and
an addition to the KB and also sectioned off space in Barracks 7
as an inmate penal room. Hermann, the architect, always kept his
distance from the rest of the Jewish inmates. Yet he did not act
like the ordinary Kapos did, often not wearing his Kapo armband.
Another individual, Willy Engel, the Lagerschreiber, slowly
gained importance in camp. He kept the camp's records and handled
the SS men's mail. Hermann was from Núremberg, and Willy from
Prague. Wily had come to Fürstengrube with his identical twin
brother a month before. Sometimes it was hard to tell them apart.
Wily had a degree in accounting from Prague University, where
Viky, his brother, had been a chemistry student. Willy was clear-headed and reasonable, and Viky was a bit cynical. I got to know
them both and liked them. Because all mail came to the office,
where Willy worked, he monitored matters concerning us. Like most
camp functionaries, he received "Kapo rations" and so could help
his brother, who worked in my shift in the mine.

Josef Jorkowski, a Pole, was the block elder. Caring for the ill were
also Jablonski, a Polish Jew from Wroclaw, and Teintuch, from Lodz. The
dental station was run by inmate #141129, Bronek Jakubowicz.

It is important to mention that an inmate could not make a
complaint about a Kapo, regardless of what the Kapo did. Thus the
dishonest Kapos went on cheating their charges with impunity.
They had cigarettes, vodka, and real leather shoes. Some had
separate rooms with furniture--even real beds. Blockkapo Michael
Eschmann's room was the best example. The walls, alternately,
were painted blue, strawberry red, canary yellow, and kelly
green. The ceiling was purple, and the floor was a high-gloss
pink. The room looked so perverse that I have never forgotten its
appearance.

Srulek Lipshitz, a Jewish inmate who knew about electronics
sometimes repaired radios for the SS and on those occasions heard
BBC newscasts. Unlike the gossip that we heard otherwise, his
bits of news were valuable. He reported that the Allies were on
the assault. Everything he told us made us feel as if the arms of
the Allied forces were reaching out to us. But there was also
fear that the Nazis' enmity toward us was so virulent that the
Allies' advance might hasten our deaths. We had real doubts that
the Nazis would ever let us go. One day Srulek overheard two SS
men discussing a Jewish woman who had shot a guard before going
into the gas chamber. We later heard about it from other inmates
as well.

We were in a constant state of hunger. Sometimes I closed my
eyes just to invite a vision of food. My strength was slipping.
There was not much flesh or muscle left on my body. Each day I
feared the next. Papa and Josek had also deteriorated. My father
had once weighed ninety-one kilos, and now he was just half that.
How long could we hold on? Hope seemed to be drifting away.

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